Peter goes after Strange, demanding to know how Carlie could have uncovered his identity after his spell.

The thing he has to do is give MJ the antidote, since she still has her spider-powers.

Also, Kaine is now scarless, and from the looks of it I'm guessing he's going to be the new Scarlet Spider. I liked what they did with Kaine when they brought him back (before 'killing' him off), but I'm not too crazy about prettifying him and making him some sort of superhero. And why tease the possibility of bringing Ben back?

And Julia Carpenter, the new Madame Web (I still don't understand why they had to kill off the old one and make her the new one) apologizes to Peter about the loss that's to come.

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Did she? Yes, he kept something from her, something important, but his reason for doing so was the usual, and fairly justifiable, one of superhero secret identities. He didn't do it to hurt her, or to spite her, but to try and keep her safer than she might well be if she knew. He certainly didn't do it to make his life easier.

I'd say it was comparable to certain real life examples like secret agents not being able to tell their family what they do for a living.

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Mary Jane told Peter earlier in Slott's run to come forward with Carlie.

What really upsets her is she's just called him out as Spidey and he is still lying to her face. She has major trust issues and from her perspective, the entire relationship was a lie. And he's insulting her and her intelligence by standing there and denying it.

And if he really cared about her, he would have chased after her instead of going to Dr. Strange and saying "What the hell, man?!"

(Again, the reason I never cared about Carlie was because it was clear from the beginning that she wasn't important. Just a distraction to create this eventual drama.)

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There were a lot of problems with the Peter/Carlie relationship. Not just the reader perception of it.

On paper (not being punny with that), they would seem like a good match. They're both smart, driven people who try to do the right thing.

But in practice, things seemed off. It's more like we were told how good they would be rather than seeing how good they would be. Carlie has major trust issues and Peter has a hard time opening up. Their chemistry seemed off.

Dan Slott knows how to write good chemistry between characters. Look at the way he writes Peter and MJ. But the Peter/Carlie thing was just... off...

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Also, it could be he's trying to reinforce the "don't remember" spell, which will actively cause anyone who is putting the truth together to prefer an option which means he's NOT Spider-Man, so she'd be more liable to believe a half-baked prevarication (since he had not, as far as he was aware at the time, broken the terms of the spell) than the actual truth. If the spell was in effect his excuse might well have worked.